The thirsty Caribbean

Peter Richards in IPS via Tierramérica: Caribbean countries are considering options like desalination plants and cloud seeding to confront a drought that threatens the regional economy and which experts warned about years ago. In St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago, the authorities are warning of prosecution, including jail time, if consumers violate measures introduced to curb the use of water other than for drinking, cooking and bathing.

In a paper presented in a 2007 conference in Barbados, entitled "Coping with Drought in the Caribbean," expert Bano Mehdi cited scientific warnings, noting that "more intense and longer droughts have been observed over wide areas since the 1970s."

From Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean southeast, to Jamaica in the central-north of the Basin, governments are implementing freshwater rationing to deal with a drastic decline in capacity in the reservoirs. Some, like Guyana, are pumping a significant amount of money to help farmers deal with the problem.

….Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister Patrick Manning is convinced that this drought is due to the effects of climate change. His administration is looking to expand the single desalination plant to move the country away from "too-heavy reliance on surface water sources." "We believe it is El Niño, but it does not in any way negate our conclusion that, as a result of climate change and other things, we can experience droughts in Trinidad and Tobago," Manning said….

Sunset in Tobago, shot by Reinhard Jahn, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution 2.0 Germany license.